BEIJING - Ai Weiwei, one of China's most prominent artists and anoutspoken critic of the Communist regime, was taken from Beijing'sairport by security agents Sunday as he was about to board a flightto Hong Kong. Police later raided his studio.
Ai is the most high-profile activist to have been detained in agovernment crackdown in which dozens of bloggers, human rightslawyers and writers have been swept up.
The arrests seem related to the government's concern thatactivists in China want to launch a "jasmine revolution" similar tothe popular uprisings roiling autocratic governments in the MiddleEast and North Africa.
Some of those detained have been accused of "inciting subversionof state power," a catch-all term used to jail anyone critical ofCommunist Party rule. Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner,faced the same charge and received an 11-year prison sentence.
Since mid-February, when anonymous calls for "jasmine rallies" inChina began circulating on the Internet, 26 people have beenarrested, 30 have disappeared and are presumed held by securityforces, and 200 have been placed under "soft detention," meaningtheir movements are restricted, according to a count by the groupChinese Human Rights Defenders reported Thursday.
But the arrest of Ai and the others appeared to mark what humanrights groups and others called a new and more sinister phase inChina's ongoing, and typically cyclical, repression of dissidents.In the past, such sweeps of activists have preceded major events onthe calendar - the 2008 Olympics, major Communist Party meetings orthe Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo last December - and have recededonce the event ended.
The arrests of bloggers and writers, in particular, on subversioncharges suggests a rollback of the limited open space recentlyallowed for free opinion on the Internet and particularly on popularTwitter-like microblogging sites.
"This is not a crackdown in the classic cycle of tightening andloosening," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong-Kong based Chinaresearcher for Human Rights Watch. "This is an effort by thegovernment to redraw the lines of permissible expression in China,to restrict the most outspoken advocates of global values."
Activists such as Ai - an active Twitter user - have beencontinually pushing the boundaries of what is allowed, whileincreased connectivity is giving ordinary Chinese more access touncensored information and viewpoints.
Chinese Human Rights Defenders, in its Thursday statement, said,"In the context of the democratic uprisings taking place in theMiddle East and North Africa, the Chinese government, fearful of itsown people, is counting on getting away with staging one of the mostrepressive campaigns in more than a decade because of theinternational community's preoccupation with events elsewhere."
The outspoken Ai, 53, was the artistic director of the "Bird'sNest" Olympic stadium, but he later turned critical of the Games. Hehas been arrested before: In 2009, in the western city of Chengdu,Ai was beaten so badly that he required surgery to have blooddrained from his brain. Late last year, he was stopped at Beijing'sairport from flying to South Korea because authorities feared hemight go to Oslo to attend the Nobel ceremony for Liu. Liu is inprison, and his wife, Liu Xia, is under house arrest.
Ai was prevented from having a solo exhibition of his work at aBeijing gallery this year, and in January authorities demolished hisnewly built Shanghai studio. In March, Ai announced that he wasopening a studio in Berlin to escape the restraints on artisticfreedom in China.
Police detained Ai on Sunday morning, and lawyers and hisassistants said they were concerned that they have not had anycommunication with him since. After his arrest, police blocked offthe streets outside his studio and raided it, carting away laptopsand the hard drive from the main computer, Ai's workers said.
They said eight staff members and Ai's wife, Lu Qing, were takento the local police station for questioning. By nightfall, Lu andtwo of the staffers were still being held, they said.
Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer, said he hoped Ai's international famewould provide him some protection while in police custody.
Liu also said that the arrest appears to be "related to theintense international situation, such as what happened in Egypt,Libya and other Middle Eastern countries." But he said it was tooearly to ascertain whether Ai's Twitter posts and interviewstatements about jasmine rallies in China played a part.
On Feb. 24, amid an online campaign for Middle East-style jasminerallies in major Chinese cities, Ai posted on his Twitter account:"I didn't care about jasmine at first, but people who are scared byjasmine sent out information about how harmful jasmine is often,which makes me realize that jasmine is what scares them the most.What a jasmine!"
Twitter is blocked in China, except for those with a virtual-private-network line or an Internet connection from outside thecountry. Ai has 72,000 followers.
Researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
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